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Monday, October 06, 2008

Quote Of The Day

"The racial bias involved [in USA's criminal justice system] may make for longer sentences for some, but is this the primary tragedy here? Any unbiased observer would consider so many men going the wrong way at all as the main problem. There is something almost curious in people seeing too many black men in jail and being more interested in decrying sentencing discrepancies than in trying to make sure their own young men do not go near the flame of criminality at all so that they are not ensnared by those discrepancies.

It is almost as if these people accept that their young men will flirt with criminality as a rite of passage — perhaps the idea being that their doing so is a sophisticated 'revolutionary' gesture against the evil Structure? Are these people trying to cast reality as an early ‘70s blaxploitation flick? I cannot say I know. But those who are most interested in the bias issue find this so urgent because they seek the thrill of once more revealing the racist rot at the heart of all whites and under American society as a whole, etc., etc. But this is a mere emotional score."

—John McWhorter, Senior Public Policy Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and moderate-liberal Democrat